If it were given each of us to transplant his life wherever he pleased in
time or space, with all the ages and all the countries of the world to
choose from, there would be quite an instructive diversity of taste. A
certain sedentary majority would prefer to remain where they were. Many
would choose the Renaissance; many some stately and simple period of
Grecian life; and still more elect to pass a few years wandering among
the villages of Palestine with an inspired conductor. For some of our
quaintly vicious contemporaries, we have the decline of the Roman Empire
and the reign of Henry III. of France. But there are others not quite so
vicious, who yet cannot look upon the world with perfect gravity, who
have never taken the categorical imperative to wife, and have more taste
for what is comfortable than for what is magnanimous and high; and I can
imagine some of these casting their lot in the Court of Blois during the
last twenty years of the life of Charles of Orleans.
The duke and duchess, their staff of officers and ladies, and the
high-born and learned persons who were attracted to Blois on a visit,
formed a society for killing time and perfecting each other in various
elegant accomplishments, such as we might imagine for an ideal
watering-place in the Delectable Mountains. The company hunted and went
on pleasure-parties; they played chess, tables, and many other games.
What we now call the history of the period passed, I imagine, over the
heads of these good people much as it passes over our own. News reached
them, indeed, of great and joyful import. William Peel received eight
livres and five sous from the duchess, when he brought the first tidings
that Rouen was recaptured from the English. {271a} A little later and
the duke sang, in a truly patriotic vein, the deliverance of Guyenne and
Normandy. {271b} They were liberal of rhymes and largesse, and welcomed
the prosperity of their country much as they welcomed the coming of
spring, and with no more thought of collaborating towards the event.
Religion was not forgotten in the Court of Blois. Pilgrimages were
agreeable and picturesque excursions. In those days a well-served chapel
was something like a good vinery in our own, an opportunity for display
and the source of mild enjoyments. There was probably something of his
rooted delight in pageantry, as well as a good deal of gentle piety, in
the feelings with which Charles gave dinner every Friday to thirteen poor
people, served them himself, and washed their feet with his own hands.
{271c} Solemn affairs would interest Charles and his courtiers from
their trivial side. The duke perhaps cared less for the deliverance of
Guyenne and Normandy than for his own verses on the occasion; just as Dr.
Russell’s correspondence in _The Times_ was among the most material parts
of the Crimean War for that talented correspondent. And I think it
scarcely cynical to suppose that religion as well as patriotism was
principally cultivated as a means of filling up the day.
It was not only messengers fiery red with haste and charged with the
destiny of nations, who were made welcome at the gates of Blois. If any
man of accomplishment came that way, he was sure of an audience, and
something for his pocket. The courtiers would have received Ben Jonson
like Drummond of Hawthornden, and a good pugilist like Captain Barclay.
They were catholic, as none but the entirely idle can be catholic. It
might be Pierre, called Dieu d’amours, the juggler; or it might be three
high English minstrels; or the two men, players of ghitterns, from the
kingdom of Scotland, who sang the destruction of the Turks; or again
Jehan Rognelet, player of instruments of music, who played and danced
with his wife and two children; they would each be called into the castle
to give a taste of his proficiency before my lord the duke. {272}
Sometimes the performance was of a more personal interest, and produced
much the same sensations as are felt on an English green on the arrival
of a professional cricketer, or round an English billiard table during a
match between Roberts and Cooke. This was when Jehan Nègre, the Lombard,
came to Blois and played chess against all these chess-players, and won
much money from my lord and his intimates; or when Baudet Harenc of
Chalons made ballades before all these ballade-makers. {273}
It will not surprise the reader to learn they were all makers of ballades
and rondels. To write verses for May day, seems to have been as much a
matter of course, as to ride out with the cavalcade that went to gather
hawthorn. The choice of Valentines was a standing challenge, and the
courtiers pelted each other with humorous and sentimental verses as in a
literary carnival. If an indecorous adventure befell our friend Maistre
Estienne le Gout, my lord the duke would turn it into the funniest of
rondels, all the rhymes being the names of the cases of nouns or the
moods of verbs; and Maistre Estienne would make reply in similar fashion,
seeking to prune the story of its more humiliating episodes. If Frédet
was too long away from Court, a rondel went to upbraid him; and it was in
a rondel that Frédet would excuse himself. Sometimes two or three, or as
many as a dozen, would set to work on the same refrain, the same idea, or
in the same macaronic jargon. Some of the poetasters were heavy enough;
others were not wanting in address; and the duchess herself was among
those who most excelled. On one occasion eleven competitors made a
ballade on the idea,
“I die of thirst beside the fountain’s edge”
(Je meurs de soif emprès de la fontaine).
These eleven ballades still exist; and one of them arrests the attention
rather from the name of the author than from any special merit in itself.
It purports to be the work of François Villon; and so far as a foreigner
can judge (which is indeed a small way), it may very well be his. Nay,
and if any one thing is more probable than another, in the great _tabula
rasa_, or unknown land, which we are fain to call the biography of
Villon, it seems probable enough that he may have gone upon a visit to
Charles of Orleans. Where Master Baudet Harenc, of Chalons, found a
sympathetic, or perhaps a derisive audience (for who can tell nowadays
the degree of Baudet’s excellence in his art?), favour would not be
wanting for the greatest ballade-maker of all time. Great as would seem
the incongruity, it may have pleased Charles to own a sort of kinship
with ragged singers, and whimsically regard himself as one of the
confraternity of poets. And he would have other grounds of intimacy with
Villon. A room looking upon Windsor gardens is a different matter from
Villon’s dungeon at Méun; yet each in his own degree had been tried in
prison. Each in his own way also, loved the good things of this life and
the service of the Muses. But the same gulf that separated Burns from
his Edinburgh patrons would separate the singer of Bohemia from the
rhyming duke. And it is hard to imagine that Villon’s training amongst
thieves, loose women, and vagabond students, had fitted him to move in a
society of any dignity and courtliness. Ballades are very admirable
things; and a poet is doubtless a most interesting visitor. But among
the courtiers of Charles, there would be considerable regard for the
proprieties of etiquette; and even a duke will sometimes have an eye to
his teaspoons. Moreover, as a poet, I can conceive he may have
disappointed expectation. It need surprise nobody if Villon’s ballade on
the theme,
“I die of thirst beside the fountain’s edge,”
was but a poor performance. He would make better verses on the lee-side
of a flagon at the sign of the Pomme du Pin, than in a cushioned settle
in the halls of Blois.
Charles liked change of place. He was often not so much travelling as
making a progress; now to join the king for some great tournament; now to
visit King René, at Tarascon, where he had a study of his own and saw all
manner of interesting things—oriental curios, King René painting birds,
and, what particularly pleased him, Triboulet, the dwarf jester, whose
skull-cap was no bigger than an orange. {276a} Sometimes the journeys
were set about on horseback in a large party, with the _fourriers_ sent
forward to prepare a lodging at the next stage. We find almost
Gargantuan details of the provision made by these officers against the
duke’s arrival, of eggs and butter and bread, cheese and peas and
chickens, pike and bream and barbel, and wine both white and red. {276b}
Sometimes he went by water in a barge, playing chess or tables with a
friend in the pavilion, or watching other vessels as they went before the
wind. {276c} Children ran along the bank, as they do to this day on the
Crinan Canal; and when Charles threw in money, they would dive and bring
it up. {276d} As he looked on at their exploits, I wonder whether that
room of gold and silk and worsted came back into his memory, with the
device of little children in a river, and the sky full of birds?
He was a bit of a book-fancier, and had vied with his brother Angoulême
in bringing back the library of their grandfather Charles V., when
Bedford put it up for sale in London. {277a} The duchess had a library
of her own; and we hear of her borrowing romances from ladies in
attendance on the blue-stocking Margaret of Scotland. {277b} Not only
were books collected, but new books were written at the court of Blois.
The widow of one Jean Fougère, a bookbinder, seems to have done a number
of odd commissions for the bibliophilous count. She it was who received
three vellum-skins to bind the duchess’s Book of Hours, and who was
employed to prepare parchment for the use of the duke’s scribes. And she
it was who bound in vermilion leather the great manuscript of Charles’s
own poems, which was presented to him by his secretary, Anthony Astesan,
with the text in one column, and Astesan’s Latin version in the other.
{277c}
Such tastes, with the coming of years, would doubtless take the place of
many others. We find in Charles’s verse much semi-ironical regret for
other days, and resignation to growing infirmities. He who had been
“nourished in the schools of love,” now sees nothing either to please or
displease him. Old age has imprisoned him within doors, where he means
to take his ease, and let younger fellows bestir themselves in life. He
had written (in earlier days, we may presume) a bright and defiant little
poem in praise of solitude. If they would but leave him alone with his
own thoughts and happy recollections, he declared it was beyond the power
of melancholy to affect him. But now, when his animal strength has so
much declined that he sings the discomforts of winter instead of the
inspirations of spring, and he has no longer any appetite for life, he
confesses he is wretched when alone, and, to keep his mind from grievous
thoughts, he must have many people around him, laughing, talking, and
singing. {278}
While Charles was thus falling into years, the order of things, of which
he was the outcome and ornament, was growing old along with him. The
semi-royalty of the princes of the blood was already a thing of the past;
and when Charles VII. was gathered to his fathers, a new king reigned in
France, who seemed every way the opposite of royal. Louis XI. had aims
that were incomprehensible, and virtues that were inconceivable to his
contemporaries. But his contemporaries were able enough to appreciate
his sordid exterior, and his cruel and treacherous spirit. To the whole
nobility of France he was a fatal and unreasonable phenomenon. All such
courts as that of Charles at Blois, or his friend René’s in Provence,
would soon be made impossible; interference was the order of the day;
hunting was already abolished; and who should say what was to go next?
Louis, in fact, must have appeared to Charles primarily in the light of a
kill-joy. I take it, when missionaries land in South Sea Islands and lay
strange embargo on the simplest things in life, the islanders will not be
much more puzzled and irritated than Charles of Orleans at the policy of
the Eleventh Louis. There was one thing, I seem to apprehend, that had
always particularly moved him; and that was, any proposal to punish a
person of his acquaintance. No matter what treason he may have made or
meddled with, an Alençon or an Armagnac was sure to find Charles reappear
from private life, and do his best to get him pardoned. He knew them
quite well. He had made rondels with them. They were charming people in
every way. There must certainly be some mistake. Had not he himself
made anti-national treaties almost before he was out of his nonage? And
for the matter of that, had not every one else done the like? Such are
some of the thoughts by which he might explain to himself his aversion to
such extremities; but it was on a deeper basis that the feeling probably
reposed. A man of his temper could not fail to be impressed at the
thought of disastrous revolutions in the fortunes of those he knew. He
would feel painfully the tragic contrast, when those who had everything
to make life valuable were deprived of life itself. And it was shocking
to the clemency of his spirit, that sinners should be hurried before
their judge without a fitting interval for penitence and satisfaction.
It was this feeling which brought him at last, a poor, purblind
blue-bottle of the later autumn, into collision with “the universal
spider,” Louis XI. He took up the defence of the Duke of Brittany at
Tours. But Louis was then in no humour to hear Charles’s texts and Latin
sentiments; he had his back to the wall, the future of France was at
stake; and if all the old men in the world had crossed his path, they
would have had the rough side of his tongue like Charles of Orleans. I
have found nowhere what he said, but it seems it was monstrously to the
point, and so rudely conceived that the old duke never recovered the
indignity. He got home as far as Amboise, sickened, and died two days
after (Jan. 4, 1465), in the seventy-fourth year of his age. And so a
whiff of pungent prose stopped the issue of melodious rondels to the end
of time.